The Pentagon's "Salvador Option": The
Deployment of Death Squads in Iraq and
Syria

Part I of this research focusses on the
broad implications of a US-NATO "humanitarian" military
campaign against Syria.

This present essay (Part II
below) focusses on the history of the Pentagon's
"Salvador Option" in Iraq and its relevance to Syria.

The
program was implemented under the tenure of John D.
Negroponte, who served as US ambassador to Iraq (June
2004-April 2005). The current ambassador to Syria, Robert S.
Ford was part of Negroponte's team in Baghdad in 2004-2005.

Syria: Overview and Recent Developments

The
Western media has played a central role in obfuscating the
nature of foreign interference in Syria including outside
support to armed insurgents. In chorus they have described
recent events in Syria as a "peaceful protest movement"
directed against the government of Bashar Al Assad, when the
evidence amply confirms that Islamic paramilitary groups
have infiltrated the rallies.

Israel's Debka Intelligence
news, while avoiding the issue of an armed insurgency,
tacitly acknowledges that Syrian forces are being confronted
by an organized paramilitary:

"[Syrian forces] are now
running into heavy resistance: Awaiting them are
anti-tank traps and fortified barriers manned by
protesters armed with heavy machine guns." DEBKAfile,

Since when are peaceful
civilian protesters armed with "heavy machine guns" and
"anti-tank traps"?

Recent developments in Syria point to
a full-fledged armed insurgency, integrated by Islamist
"freedom fighters" covertly supported, trained and equipped
by foreign powers. According to Israeli intelligence
sources:

NATO headquarters in Brussels and the Turkish
high command are meanwhile drawing up plans for their first
military step in Syria, which is to arm the rebels with
weapons for combating the tanks and helicopters
spearheading the Assad regime's crackdown on dissent.
Instead of repeating the Libyan model of air strikes,
NATO strategists are thinking more in terms of pouring
large quantities of anti-tank and anti-air rockets, mortars
and heavy machine guns into the protest centers for beating
back the government armored forces. (DEBKAfile, NATO to give rebels anti-tank
weapons, August 14, 2011, emphasis added)

The delivery of
weapons to the rebels is to be implemented "overland, namely
through Turkey and under Turkish army
protection....Alternatively, the arms would be trucked
into Syria under Turkish military guard and transferred to
rebel leaders at pre-arranged rendez-vous." (Ibid,
emphasis added)

According to Israeli sources, which
remain to be verified, NATO and the Turkish High command,
also contemplate the development of a "jihad" involving the
recruitment of thousands of Islamist "freedom fighters",
reminiscent of the enlistment of Mujahideen to wage the
CIA's jihad (holy war) in the heyday of the Soviet-Afghan
war:

Also discussed in Brussels and Ankara, our sources
report, is a campaign to enlist thousands of Muslim
volunteers in Middle East countries and the Muslim world to
fight alongside the Syrian rebels. The Turkish army would
house these volunteers, train them and secure their passage
into Syria. (Ibid, emphasis added)

These various
developments point towards the possible involvement of
Turkish troops inside Syria, which could potentially lead to
a broader military confrontation between Syria and Turkey as
well as a full-fledged "humanitarian" military intervention
by NATO.

In recent developments, Islamist death squads
have penetrated the port city of Latakia's Ramleh district,
which includes a Palestinian refugee camp of some 10,000
residents. These armed gunmen which include rooftop snipers
are terrorizing the local population.

In a cynical twist,
the Western media has presented the Islamist paramilitary
groups in Latakia as "Palestinian dissidents" and
"activists" defending themselves against the Syrian armed
forces. In this regard, the actions of armed gangs directed
against the Palestinian community in Ramleh visibly seeks
to foment political conflict between Palestine and Syria.
Several Palestinian personalities have sided with the Syrian
"protest movement", while casually ignoring the fact that
the "pro-democracy" death squads are covertly supported by
Israel and Turkey.

Turkey's foreign minister Ahmet
Davutoglu has intimated that Ankara could consider military
action against Syria if the Al Assad government doesn't
cease "immediately and unconditionally" its actions against
"protesters". In a bitter irony, the Islamist fighters
operating inside Syria who are terrorizing the civilian
population, are trained and financed by the Turkish Erdogan
government.

Meanwhile, US, NATO and Israeli military
planners have outlined the contours of a humanitarian
military campaign, in which Turkey (the second largest
military force inside NATO) would play a central role.

On August 15, Tehran reacted to the unfolding crisis in
Syria, stating that "events in Syria should be considered
only as internal affairs of that country and accused the
West and its allies with trying to destabilize Syria, in
order to make the case for its eventual occupation". (Iran
Foreign Ministry Statement, quoted in Iran urges West to stay out of Syria's
‘internal matters' Todayszaman.com, August 15,
2011)

We are at dangerous crossroads:

Were a military
operation to be launched against Syria, the broader Middle
East Central Asian region extending from North Africa and
the Eastern Mediterranean to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border
with China would be engulfed in the turmoil of an extended
war. A war on Syria could evolve towards a US-NATO military
campaign directed against Iran, in which Turkey and Israel
would be directly involved.

It is crucial to spread the
word and break the channels of media disinformation.

A
critical and unbiased understanding of what is happening in
Syria is of crucial importance in reversing the tide of
military escalation towards a broader regional
war.

US Ambassador
Robert Ford arrived in Damascus in late January 2011 at the
height of the protest movement in Egypt.

America's
previous Ambassador to Syria was recalled by Washington
following the 2005 assassination of former Prime minister
Rafick Hariri, which was blamed, without evidence, on the
government of Bashar Al Assad.

The author was in Damascus
on January 27, 2011 when Washington's Envoy presented his
credentials to the Al Assad government. (See photo below).

At the outset of my visit to Syria in January 2011, I
reflected on the significance of this diplomatic appointment
and the role it might play in a covert process of political
destabilization. I did not, however, foresee that this
process would be implemented within less than two months
following the instatement of Robert S. Ford as US Ambassador
to Syria.

The reinstatement of a US ambassador in
Damascus, but more specifically the choice of Robert S.
Ford as US ambassador, bears a direct relationship to
the onset of the protest movement in mid-March against the
government of Bashar al Assad.

Robert S. Ford was the man
for the job. As "Number Two" at the US embassy in Baghdad
(2004-2005) under the helm of Ambassador John D. Negroponte,
he played a key role in implementing the Pentagon's "Iraq
Salvador Option". The latter consisted in supporting Iraqi
death squadrons and paramilitary forces modelled on the
experience of Central America.

The Western media has
misled public opinion on the nature of the Arab protest
movement by failing to address the support provided by the
US State Department as well as US foundations (including the
National Endowment for Democracy (NED)) to selected pro-US
opposition groups. Known and documented, the U.S. State
Department "has been been funding opponents of Syrian
President Bashar Assad, since 2006. (U.S. admits funding Syrian opposition -
World - CBC News April 18, 2011)

The protest movement
in Syria was upheld by the media as part of the "Arab
Spring", presented to public opinion as a pro-democracy
protest movement which spread spontaneously from Egypt and
the Maghreb to the Mashriq. The fact of the matter is that
these various country initiatives were closely timed and
coordinated. Michel Chossudovsky, The Protest Movement in Egypt: "Dictators"
do not Dictate, They Obey Orders, Global Research,
January 29, 2011)

There is reason to believe that events
in Syria, however, were planned well in advance in
coordination with the process of regime change in other Arab
countries including Egypt and Tunisia.

The outbreak of
the protest movement in the southern border city of Daraa
was carefully timed to follow the events in Tunisia and
Egypt.

It is worth noting that the US Embassy in various
countries has played a central role in supporting opposition
groups. In Egypt, for instance, the April 6 Youth Movement
was supported directly by the US embassy in Cairo.

Who
is Ambassador Robert Stephen Ford?

Since his arrival
in Damascus in late January 2011, Ambassador Robert S. Ford
played a central role in laying the groundwork as well as
establishing contacts with opposition groups.

A
functioning US embassy in Damascus was seen as a
precondition for carrying out a process of political
destabilization leading to "regime change".

Ambassador
Robert S., Ford is no ordinary diplomat. He was U.S.
representative in January 2004 to the Shiite city of Najaf
in Iraq. Najaf was the stronghold of the Mahdi army

A few
months later he was appointed "Number Two Man" (Minister
Counsellor for Political Affairs), at the US embassy in
Baghdad at the outset of John Negroponte's tenure as US
Ambassador to Iraq (June 2004- April 2005). Ford
subsequently served under Negroponte's successor Zalmay
Khalilzad prior to his appointment as Ambassador to Algeria
in 2006.

Negroponte's mandate as US ambassador to Iraq
(together with Robert S. Ford) was to coordinate out of the
US embassy, the covert support to death squads and
paramilitary groups in Iraq with a view to fomenting
sectarian violence and weakening the resistance movement.
Robert S. Ford as "Number Two" (Minister Counsellor for
Political Affairs) at the US Embassy played a central role
in this endeavor.

To understand Robert Ford's mandate in
both Baghdad and subsequently in Damascus, it is important
to reflect briefly on the history of US covert operations
and the central role played by John D. Negroponte.

Negroponte and the "Salvador Option"

John
Negroponte had served as US ambassador to Honduras from 1981
to 1985. As Ambassador in Tegucigalpa, he played a key role
in supporting and supervising the Nicaraguan Contra
mercenaries who were based in Honduras. The cross border
Contra attacks into Nicaragua claimed some 50 000 civilian
lives.

During the same period, Negroponte was
instrumental in setting up the Honduran military death
squads, "operating with Washington support's, [they]
assassinated hundreds of opponents of the US-backed regime."
(See Bill Vann, Bush Nominee linked to Latin American
Terrorism, by Bill Vann, Global Research, November 2001, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/VAN111A.html)

"Under the rule of General Gustavo Alvarez Martnez,
Honduras's military government was both a close ally of the
Reagan administration and was "disappearing" dozens of
political opponents in classic death squad fashion.

In a
1982 letter to The Economist, Negroponte wrote that it was
"simply untrue to state that death squads have made their
appearance in Honduras." The Country Report on Human Rights
Practices that his embassy sent to the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee took the same line, insisting that there
were "no political prisoners in Honduras" and that the
"Honduran government neither condones nor knowingly permits
killings of a political or nonpolitical nature."

Yet
according to a four-part series in the Baltimore Sun in
1995, in 1982 alone the Honduran press ran 318 stories of
murders and kidnappings by the Honduran military. The Sun
described the activities of a secret CIA-trained Honduran
army unit, Battalion 316, that used "shock and suffocation
devices in interrogations. Prisoners often were kept naked
and, when no longer useful, killed and buried in unmarked
graves."

On August 27, 1997, CIA Inspector General
Frederick P. Hitz released a 211-page classified report
entitled "Selected Issues Relating to CIA Activities in
Honduras in the 1980's." This report was partly declassified
on Oct. 22, 1998, in response to demands by the Honduran
human rights ombudsman. Opponents of Negroponte are
demanding that all Senators read the full report before
voting on his nomination. to the position of US Permanent
Representative to the UN}" (Peter Roff and James Chapin,
Face-off: Bush's Foreign Policy Warriors, Global Research
November 2001, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/ROF111A.html

John Negroponte- Robert S. Ford. The Iraq "Salvador
Option"

In January 2005, following Negroponte's
appointment as US ambassador to Iraq, the Pentagon confirmed
in a story leaked to Newsweek that it was "considering
forming hit squads of Kurdish and Shia fighters to target
leaders of the Iraqi insurgency in a strategic shift
borrowed from the American struggle against left-wing
guerrillas in Central America 20 years ago". (El Salvador-style 'death squads' to be
deployed by US against Iraq militants - Times Online,
January 10, 2005)

John Negroponte and Robert S. Ford at
the US Embassy worked closely together on the Pentagon's
project. Two other embassy officials, namely Henry Ensher
(Ford's Deputy) and a younger official in the political
section, Jeffrey Beals, played an important role in the team
"talking to a range of Iraqis, including extremists". (See
The New Yorker, March 26, 2007). Another key individual in
Negroponte's team was James Franklin Jeffrey, America's
ambassador to Albania (2002-2004). Jeffrey is currently the
US Ambassador to Iraq.

Negroponte also brought into the
team one of his former collaborators Colonel James Steele
(ret) from his Honduras heyday:

Under the "Salvador
Option," "Negroponte had assistance from his colleague from
his days in Central America during the 1980's, Ret. Col
James Steele. Steele, whose title in Baghdad was Counselor
for Iraqi Security Forces supervised the selection and
training of members of the Badr Organization and Mehdi Army,
the two largest Shi'ite militias in Iraq, in order to target
the leadership and support networks of a primarily Sunni
resistance. Planned or not, these death squads promptly
spiralled out of control to become the leading cause of
death in Iraq.

Intentional or not, the scores of
tortured, mutilated bodies which turn up on the streets of
Baghdad each day are generated by the death squads whose
impetus was John Negroponte. And it is this U.S.-backed
sectarian violence which largely led to the hell-disaster
that Iraq is today. (Dahr Jamail, Managing Escalation: Negroponte and Bush's
New Iraq Team,. Antiwar.com, January 7, 2007)

John
Negroponte described Robert Ford while at the embassy in
Baghdad, as "one of these very tireless people ... who
didn’t mind putting on his flak jacket and helmet and
going out of the Green Zone to meet contacts." Robert S.
Ford is fluent in both Arabic and Turkish. He was dispatched
by Negroponte to undertake strategic contacts:

[O]ne
Pentagon proposal would send Special Forces teams to advise,
support and possibly train Iraqi squads, most likely
hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite
militiamen, to target Sunni insurgents and their
sympathizers, even across the border into Syria,
according to military insiders familiar with the
discussions. It remains unclear, however, whether this would
be a policy of assassination or so-called "snatch"
operations, in which the targets are sent to secret
facilities for interrogation. The current thinking is that
while U.S. Special Forces would lead operations in, say,
Syria, activities inside Iraq itself would be carried out by
Iraqi paramilitaries. (Newsweek, January 8, 2005, emphasis
added)

The plan had the support of the US appointed Iraqi
government of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi:

The Pentagon
declined to comment, but one insider told Newsweek: “What
everyone agrees is that we can’t just go on as we are. We
have to find a way to take the offensive against the
insurgents. Right now, we are playing defence. And we are
losing.”

Hit squads would be controversial and would
probably be kept secret.

The experience of the
so-called “death squads” in Central America remains raw
for many even now and helped to sully the image of the
United States in the region.

.... John Negroponte, the
US Ambassador in Baghdad, had a front-row seat at the time
as Ambassador to Honduras from 1981-85.

Death squads
were a brutal feature of Latin American politics of the
time. In Argentina in the 1970s and Guatemala in the 1980s,
soldiers wore uniform by day but used unmarked cars by night
to kidnap and kill those hostile to the regime or their
suspected sympathisers.

In the early 1980s President
Reagan’s Administration funded and helped to train
Nicaraguan contras based in Honduras with the aim of ousting
Nicaragua’s Sandinista regime. The Contras were equipped
using money from illegal American arms sales to Iran, a
scandal that could have toppled Mr Reagan.

It was in El
Salvador that the United States trained small units of local
forces specifically to target rebels.

The thrust of
the Pentagon proposal in Iraq, according to Newsweek, is to
follow that model and direct US special forces teams to
advise, support and train Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and
Shia militiamen to target leaders of the Sunni insurgency.

It is unclear whether the main aim of the missions
would be to assassinate the rebels or kidnap them and
take them away for interrogation. Any mission in Syria
would probably be undertaken by US Special Forces.

Nor is
it clear who would take responsibility for such a programme
— the Pentagon or the Central Intelligence Agency. Such
covert operations have traditionally been run by the CIA at
arm’s length from the administration in power, giving US
officials the ability to deny knowledge of it. (Times
Online, op cit, emphasis added)

Under Negroponte's helm at
the US Embassy in Baghdad, a wave of covert civilian
killings and targeted assassinations was unleashed.
Engineers, medical doctors, scientists and intellectuals
were also targeted. The objective was to create factional
divisions between Sunni, Shiite, Kurds and Christians, as
well as weed out civilian support for the Iraqi resistance.
The Christian community was one of the main targets of the
assassination program.

The Pentagon's objective also
consisted in training an Iraqi Army, Police and Security
Forces, which would carry out a homegrown
"counterinsurgency" program (unofficially) on behalf of the
U.S.

The Role of General David Petraeus

A
"Multi-National Security Transition Command Iraq" (MNSTC)
was established under the command of General David Petraeus
with the mandate to train and equip a local Iraqi Army,
Police and Security forces. General David Petraeus's (who
was appointed by Obama to head the CIA in July 2011),
assumed the command of the MNSTC in June 2004 at the very
outset of Negroponte's tenure as ambassador.

The MNSTC
was an integral part of the Pentagon's "Operation Salvador
Iraq" under the helm of Ambassador John Negroponte. It was
categorized as an exercise in counterinsurgency. At the end
of Petraeus' term, the MNSTC had trained some 100,000 Iraqi
Security Forces, police, etc., which constituted a body of
local military personnel to be used to target the Iraqi
resistance as well as its civilian supporters.

From
Baghdad to Damascus: The Syria "Salvador Option"

While conditions in Syria are markedly different to
those in Iraq, Robert S. Ford's stint as "Number Two Man" at
the US Embassy in Baghdad has a direct bearing on the nature
of his activities in Syria including his contacts with
opposition groups.

In early July, US Ambassador Robert
Ford travelled to Hama and had meetings with members of the
protest movement (Low-key U.S. diplomat transforms Syria
policy - The Washington Post, July 12, 2011). Reports
confirm that Robert Ford had numerous contacts with
opposition groups both before and after his July trip to
Hama. In a recent statement (August 4), he confirmed that
the embassy will continue "reaching out" to opposition
groups in defiance of the Syrian authorities.

General
David Petraeus: President Obama's New Head of the
CIA

Obama's newly appointed CIA head, David Petraeus
who led the MNSTC "Counterinsurgency" program in Baghdad in
2004 in coordination with Ambassador John Negroponte, is
slated to play a key intelligence role in relation to Syria
--including covert support to opposition forces and "freedom
fighters", the infiltration of Syrian intelligence and armed
forces, etc. These tasks would be carried out in liaison
with Ambassador Robert S. Ford. Both men worked together in
Iraq; they were part of Negroponte's extended team in
Baghdad in 2004-2005.

PART III

Syria's Death
Squads and Islamist "Freedom
Fighters"

(forthcoming)

*************

Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning
author, Professor of Economics (Emeritus) at the University
of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on
Globalization (CRG). He is the author of The Globalization
of Poverty and The New World Order (2003) and America’s
“War on Terrorism” (2005). His latest book is entitled
Towards a World War Three Scenario, The
Dangers of Nuclear War (2011). Michel Chossudovsky
spent over a month in Syria in January-February 2011.

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